Stephanie Rainey: 'It took me a long time to recover, but you have to get up again and keep going'

The Cork singer-songwriter on leaving her record label and beginning again

Cork singer-songwriter Stephanie Rainey filmed the video for her latest release, 'No Cowboy' in LA before the Covid era. Picture: Miki Barlok

When Stephanie Rainey flew to Los Angeles in February 2020, she was excited at the prospect of performing at a music showcase and the opportunity to shoot a video for one of her songs in one of the world’s most iconic locations. Just a short time later, it was time to return home, and all had changed utterly.

“When I was going out there, I was one of the only people wearing a mask on the plane — I wear it for my voice, so I don’t get a dry throat. By the time I was coming back, the whole place was masked up. It was like coming back to a different world,” she says.

While she was in LA, the Cork singer-songwriter filmed the video for her latest release, 'No Cowboy'. The result is a vivid, and poignant, reminder of life pre-Covid, as Rainey strides down a bustling Hollywood Boulevard, surrounded by mask-free pedestrians.

“I wanted to capture all the real people in LA, this city of dreams, trying to make it happen."

“The video was very much guerilla-style, we just went down to Hollywood Boulevard and started shooting. It is strange releasing it now, I miss that closeness of people. I feel so grateful now that I was able to do it.” For Rainey, Hollywood, the home of happy endings, was a fitting location for the video of No Cowboy, what she describes as her “redemption song”, in which she reflects on the ups and downs of her music career and how even when your dreams come true, things don’t always turn out the way you expect.

“I wanted to capture all the real people in LA, this city of dreams, trying to make it happen. The reality of life is so much harder,” she says.

It’s a realisation that has been hard-won for Rainey, who shot to fame in 2015 when the video for her searing ballad about grief and loss, Please Don’t Go, became an overnight viral hit.

“I had been trying my hardest to break through but it wasn’t happening for me. I was on the cusp of packing it in. I had the funds to make one video, for one of the songs from the EP I had released. I chose Please Don’t Go, which is not a radio song — it is a slow song, a sad song. I just said I’m going to make this a project I’m going to do for myself.” 

The song, which was inspired by the tragic death of her infant nephew from meningitis, struck a chord with people around the world.

“I put it up and overnight, everything just changed. The video had a million views in one day, I had calls from record companies in the US, the UK, everywhere. I ended up signing a deal.” 

However, ultimately, Rainey ended up parting ways with the record label without making an album. It was an experience that was painful, but valuable, she says.

“It was the age-old thing of finding a deal, and it just didn’t work, for a number of different reasons. When I realised that I was going to leave the label, it wasn’t like we had any huge failure over our heads, it was just that we weren’t going to continue working together. When you are an artist and a musician and you think, 'some day I’m going to grow up and get a record deal’, you don’t think about the other side of the coin.” Rainey took some time to recalibrate and came back feeling more inspired than ever.

Rainey has been busy writing and producing music at home in Glanmire during lockdown, where she lives with her fiancé Gary, a music producer.

“It took me a long time to recover from that but you get to the point where you go ‘right, I have to get up again and keep going’. When I wrote No Cowboy, it was like nobody is coming, you are back to relying on yourself. In a weird way, that is a very empowering feeling. You go, right, I’ve done it many times before — I can get back on the horse and rely on myself. I don’t regret anything — I got great things from those deals and I met amazing people. All of that continues to help me now.” Rainey has been busy writing and producing music at home in Glanmire during lockdown, where she lives with her fiancé Gary, a music producer.

“We are lucky, we work on music together, and send it off to London to get finished. That has been invaluable, that I have been able to keep working. I’ve been writing a lot, with other artists over Zoom and I absolutely love it. My family live five minutes up the road and it has been nice to be able to go up and see my parents. We’re lucky. It has made me appreciate what we have.” A project that is close to her heart is Irish Women In Harmony, a collective of female artists which last summer brought out an acclaimed cover version of The Cranberries’ Dreams, to benefit a domestic violence charity.

“Part of my involvement with Irish Women in Harmony is trying to broach the issue that we are not breaking female talent in this country, and that has to change. The music and the talent is there, it just needs to be backed up”.

Rainey says her experience has demonstrated how musicians also need support in finding a viable way to forge a long-term career in the industry. The industry move to streaming has resulted in a huge shift in how performers earn their living, with a lot of new talent breaking through on social media platforms. Rainey points out that even since she became a viral sensation, the way people access music has been transformed.

“Content is becoming very disposable. You can put an awful lot of yourself into something and really you are only getting a small bit of time out of it. I say that as somebody who digests content in the exact same way, it is not a judgment. With TikTok, we are seeing a lot of artists getting signed off the back of their following. I had a viral video and I will never forget what that was like — I feel that even since then, the amount of time you get out of a video like that has become shorter. It has moved on, it’s like 24 hours later and it’s like ‘that was yesterday’s viral video’. It’s weird.” Rainey has been dipping a toe into the world of TikTok recently.

“I’m only getting started on TikTok, I still haven’t quite figured it out. It is like a content monster, you have to keep posting to it,” she says. Her dream is still to put out an album, however old-fashioned and quaint a concept that might seem to some people now.

“It’s an art form that is dying. When you put out songs every couple of weeks, it takes away from the entire body of work. What starts to suffer within that is the songs — how many times have you listened to an album, and there’s 12 songs, there’s the singles that go on the radio but the one that you love might be No 12. What I do is ask myself, if I’m not here in the morning and people want to listen to my music, what am I able to stand over and why did I put it out? If we can go back to that in some way, it will be good for the world of music and the creative world in general. Put out the songs that mean the most to you, and I think those are the ones that connect for longer.” 

In terms of connecting with audiences, Rainey has built up a strong and loyal fanbase for her live performances, which she says have always sustained her creatively.

“Live is the best part of the job. It gives you every single thing. It makes all of the things you do in the process worthwhile. Even when I was not putting out music, I kept doing shows, and they kept getting bigger. The gigs are the best part of the whole thing because you get to meet people and get to know who is listening to your music.” 

Rainey has some shows pencilled in for the end of the year and says she can barely bring herself to imagine what it will be like to play live again after the shock of the entire industry shutting down. “It is something I can’t wait to come back but I worry about when that is going happen and what it is going to look like. It is hard to imagine being crammed into a venue surrounded by people and feeling okay. There is something quite sad about that. In terms of going to a gig myself, my favourite moment is when a song you all love comes on, you put your arms around your friends, you are in it together, there is nothing like it. That is the complete opposite of what we are being asked to do now. I feel like in that sense if gigs go back to normal, people are going to feel so grateful and free. I hope by December we are good to go…who knows?”